Font Book trouble

kaytee

Registered
Hi! Font Book continues to bewilder me. I've had difficulty with Font Book before, usually because I've added a font that has been corrupted through downloading. But today takes me over the edge! I have had issues previously with the Helvetica Neue collection and have found that my Adobe font collection functions correctly as opposed to True Type. This past week, one of my clients supplied me with an OpenType version since he has a Gateway and does not want me to send him outlined type versions of the file. (I think he is planning to reuse my work and doesn't want to pay for it...) FontBook couldn't view the OpenType, it was as if it were not in the font folder. So I threw the files away. The file I had been working on opened without a problem and I notified him that there was an issue with the Opentype font he had supplied.

When opening the file today, I got the typical font substitution alert telling me that Helvetica Neue was not installed. I checked FontBook and it was not there. I went to the font folder and I could see that it was still there, I double-clicked and opened the preview and was able to view it but when clicking to install the font, I was returned to the top of my font list. I tried to reinstall it from FontBook, clicked the plus and navigated to my font folder. When I opened the Helvetica Neue file from there all the various Neue fonts were "grayed out" except the basic font. I selected it, clicked open and again was taken back to the top of my font list. I've been working on trying to open this all day and make it functional, I've even tried installing an archived file I have in hopes that Font Book would recognize it, NO LUCK!!!!!

Can anyone please help???
 
OK. I answered my own problem, sort of...when all else fails, reinstall Tiger.............now I have to be sure all my upgrades are there and I am still uneasy about going w/ 10.4.9 but that's my next endeavor...before I go w/CS3 (does it ever stop???) After trying a bunch of "quick fixes" I gave up and reinstalled. No problems now. Guess I should learn there's no quick fix like starting from the beginning!
 
Thanks for the link. I'll check it out. I gave up on them as I have never had too much trouble with FontBook... I tried Suitcase because someone insisted that I try it and found it to be overcomplicated if that's a word. Furthermore, it corrupted a bunch of my fonts and Illustrator didn't seem to like it. It took me several weeks to get things back to "normalcy" after that disaster. But Linux is supposed to sync well with Macs so it's worth a look!

Thanks! I appreciate your help!!!
 
FontExplorer blows DOORS off of FontBook and it is free:
http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorer

I hate Suitcase because it's autoload feature won't go away when you tell it to. Not a handy feature when you don't want it to load!

FontBook is made for the casual user. If you have more than 500 fonts I wouldn't recommend using it. I've been using FE for 2 years now without any issues and they do put out an update every 6 months or so.

Also, once you install it, make sure to run Tools/Clean System Fonts Folder so you aren't loading all your fonts there; just the required system fonts. Create a new folder called MY FONTS or something like that and put your fonts there to load.
 
Ideally, you want to respect the font folder organization of OS X:
/System/Library/Fonts is for OS specific resources
/Library/Fonts is for shared application font resources, as well as fonts for all users on the machine
/Users/username/Library/Fonts is for fonts licensed and/or accessible by a specific user.

I believe FontExplorer will respect those locations if you want to set it up that way...
 
I really do need to try FontExplorer out. If it doesn't work out for me I can always go back to FontBook. I do keep my system fonts in the System library and my fonts in "my font library" in with all the other system stuff & Apps on my harddrive. I'm the only user so there's no worries about others messing with them. Thanks for all the advise. I find the most difficult thing about freelancing to be the lack of interaction with others on troubleshooting and tips..............that and the awful expense involved with staying current on upgrading apps, etc. There's not enough time to work and be as well informed as I'd like to & need to be and deal with life!
 
Ideally, you want to respect the font folder organization of OS X:
/System/Library/Fonts is for OS specific resources
/Library/Fonts is for shared application font resources, as well as fonts for all users on the machine
/Users/username/Library/Fonts is for fonts licensed and/or accessible by a specific user.

I believe FontExplorer will respect those locations if you want to set it up that way...

FE will actually organize your system fonts folder. Pretty cool!
 
FontExplorer is amazing!
I can't believe what a difference it makes, funny thing is, I had no idea I had as many fonts and they're sooooooo organized!
Thanks to Natobasso and Flying Meat for your advise!
 
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